posted at 10:12 am on December 21, 2009 by Ed Morrissey

Oh, I also forgot — we’re militia members, too. Mark Steyn points us to these remarks by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) in response to the stubborn opposition to Democrats’ attempts to have the federal government reorder a sixth of the American economy. The video isn’t available from yesterday’s debate (C-SPA appears to be down), but Kerry Picket provides the transcript:

“Voting ‘no’ and hiding from the vote are the same result. Those of us on the floor see it. It was clear the three of them who did not cast their yes votes until all 60 Senate votes had been tallied and it was clear that the result was a foregone conclusion. And why? Why all this discord and discourtesy, all this unprecedented destructive action? All to break the momentum of our new young president.

They are desperate to break this president. They have ardent supporters who are nearly hysterical at the very election of President Barack Obama. The birthers, the fanatics, the people running around in right-wing militia and Aryan support groups, it is unbearable to them that President Barack Obama should exist. That is one powerful reason. It is not the only one.”

So in which of these three groups does the Seattle Times editorial board belong? Their editorial does not come from a bastion of right-wing thinking. It comes from a newspaper that backed Barack Obama for President and who cheerleads for universal coverage, in a state that regularly elects liberals to the Beltway. The Seattle Times says that it’s time Congress smelled the coffee and put ObamaCare out of its misery, and started focusing on the real crisis in the US, and it strongly implies that Congress has botched the job thus far:

THE health-care dance in Washington, D.C., has gone on long enough. Congress needs to focus on the economy and set health care aside.

This is a change of position for us. This page supported Barack Obama for president, enthusiastically. We have supported the health-care effort until now. We still support universal coverage as a social goal.

But the longer the fight goes on, the more it feels that the timing is all wrong. The economy is wounded. Employers are hurting. The time to think about loading employers with new burdens is when they are strong. Not now.

Right now, Congress needs to focus on the economy. It needs to follow the lead of Sen. Maria Cantwell and re-enact Glass-Steagall, the law that separated investment banking from commercial banking and for 50 years helped maintain sanity on Wall Street. It needs to bolster the antitrust laws. It needs to lower the estate tax.

It needs to target the rest of the stimulus money at things that really stimulate — all of these actions to provide breathing room to small- and middle-sized family businesses that were once the backbone of the economy and can be again.

Oh, those right-wing militia members and their racist impulses! Why, it’s positively Aryan to worry about the economy ahead of Democrats’ attempts to seize control of the health-care system! Sheldon Whitehouse has a nice spot at the re-education camp for the Seattle Times, right next to the coffeemaker.

When an idiot can’t answer an argument, he tosses ad hominem bombs in an attempt to silence his critics and provide cover for his intellectual deficiencies. When a politician does it, we should all wonder why he’s unable to provide support for his position. In Whitehouse’s case, it may be either that he’s a foul-mouthed fool educated far beyond his mental capacity to process the information, or that he’s defending an indefensible position and has nothing better to offer. Or, in Whitehouse’s case, it could easily be both.

Update: Whitehouse denied that he said this when Kerry asked him to explain, but as this video shows, Whitehouse was lying:

If he’s standing by the speech, then he needs to explain how his denial could possibly be valid. So he’s not just a gasbag demagogue, he’s a lying gasbag demagogue.